The Light Over London by Julia Kelly

Author:Julia Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books

12

LOUISE

The sun was setting when Louise let her pack slide off and hit the bare wood floor of the room that would be her home for the foreseeable future. They’d bumped along cratered and debris-strewn streets in a canvas-sided truck, stopping first at the Charlton Barracks, where Hatfield, Cartruse, and Williams had climbed out. They would be billeted there, but the girls were two blocks away from the Woolwich Depot, in a five-story redbrick building that before the war had been a shuttered hospital. Nigella, Lizzie, and Mary had the first room off the stairs, and Vera, Charlie, and Louise had been assigned the one right next door. Now, taking in the Spartan look of the place, Louise could see that it had been hurriedly fitted out to cram three ATS women into two bunks and a cot that blocked the door unless it was angled just so.

“At least it’s warm,” said Charlie, laying out the three cushions that would form her ATS-issued mattress. Louise had learned to call the cushions “biscuits” during her first week of basic training, which was also when she had learned that the only way to keep the bloody things from slipping apart in her sleep was to lash them together with a spare blanket. If there was one.

“It should be,” said Vera with a laugh, while she tugged at the heavy blackout curtains that covered every window in London to deter the Luftwaffe. “It’s August.”

Charlie smiled. “You never know in London, right, Louise?”

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know—I’ve never been.”

Vera dropped her hairbrush on the floor with a clatter. “You’ve never—We’ve been training together for four months. How did you never mention it?”

“I thought your fellow was from London,” said Charlie.

“He is, but we met in Cornwall, remember?”

“Well, that settles it,” said Vera. “The first free afternoon we have, we’ll take you for a grand tour of the city. Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey.”

“Saint Paul’s and the Embankment,” Charlie chipped in. “There’s so much to see, even if half of it’s been bombed.”

Louise’s smile suddenly became a little watery at her friends’ enthusiasm. The months of hard work, huddling around an electric fire in a little hut on the edge of a training field before the air raid siren sounded for their training drills, had bonded her to these women in a way she never would’ve expected. She missed Kate, but in Vera, Charlie, Lizzie, Nigella, and Mary, she’d found a different kind of kinship. Her father had been right in his last letter: they were all in danger, but at least they were in it together.

“I would love that,” she said.

“Of course, the moment your flier comes to town you’ll forget all about us,” Charlie teased.

“Have you had any word from Paul?” asked Vera.

The smile she’d been holding in since Cartruse had fallen asleep and she’d finally caved to the desire to read Paul’s letter broke free. “He’s coming on the first of September.”

“That’s wonderful!” cried Vera.

“Finally,” said Charlie with a laugh.

Louise fell back on her bunk, resting her head on one of the biscuits.

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